...but then he believes in God so perhaps that goes without saying?

.. I feel sorry for this minister. You laugh sometimes because peoples greed is totally to blame. However...

The detail of where the money came from (credit cards / bank loans / savings) shows him totally taken in by the scam, and digging around for the pennies obviously excited about the fact he would be getting money to pay for his charitable venture.

Maybe better education is needed, but what more can we do?

Sad though this situation may be I must say that I found Rev Nooney's comment that it made him 'Question his faith' disturbing. Surley a man in his position is well aware of 'the evils that men do' and that being a Christian does not grant you immunity to any of these evils. The Rev Nooney should take this on the chin and carry on with his life and work knowing his good intentions count for something even if the reality was something different.

The bit about questioning faith is a bit odd - the Bible's full of good guys messing up, so I don't know why he'd expect his situation to be different. This is completely tangential to faith.

As for the first commenter, nice dig, yeah. Quite clever.

Emotions seem to have left me because for the last five days or so I've done nothing but cry and shout in anger at things."

Hmmm.. sounds like emotions haven't gone too far then...

I agree it's strange he would question his faith after seeing first hand what evil can do, on the other hand he's clearly more angry at himself than anything else.

Curious about how he'd react as a man of God if he did actually come face to face with the 419er.

And to the first poster, bet you were well chuffed when you thought that one up, weren't you? Pillock.

He didn't think anything up, the guy's who wrote the bible did the "thinking up".

Could the writer of the article please tell me where County Londonderry is?

belief in god vs belief in a viable linux desktop distro...

It was always bound to happen. When people are motivated by greed it's easy to laugh at their downfall because they don't really deserve anything better, they want the money, they want to be rich and well off. This poor sap was trying to set up a multi-faith church and soup-kitchen. Whatever your thoughts on religion, he was trying to do something for the greater good of people, to help vulnerable people and was motivated by altruism, not greed.

The problem, of course, is that if you're a thief you're motivated by stealing and don't really care where the money comes from, and on the internet you have to be careful.

Poor guy though.

Whilst I am quite happy to accept the interpretation that he was indeed setting up a soup kitchen - what sort of kitchen was it that 12k could be used just on the expenses to get the real money needed?

These things are normally staffed by volunteers, ok the food is real and costs money but that's an ongoing cost, and would need ongoing fund raising anyway, and I guess somewhere would need to be rented, but really charitable works like this should be more about getting into the local community and getting locals who can to help out those who need it, then you have the social aspects of charity as well as just the physical ones. Rather than some super rich type storming in to take the glory.

Maybe I'm wrong and 12k is just a months budget, anyone know?

I have sympathy for this man, even though he is a man of God, and whilst I do regard faith as misguided (often smug, sometimes extremely uncharitable), I wouldn't say that people of faith are necessarily gullible. But really if religion is going to be relevant to anyone, the religious do need to have a slightly better understanding of human nature than this chap appears to have.

As far as questioning his faith - good. All faithful should question (or at least examine) their faith on a daily basis, and if something as minor as being swindled causes it's loss, well perhaps minister wasn't the right career. If on the other hand it recovers stronger than ever - cool for him. I don't agree with him, but I can quite happily envy him.

County Londonderry is in Northern Ireland